


Angus McDonald; Detective

by TheTriggeredHappy



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, I have a lot of feelings, Spoilers, my boy and son let him live in peace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-10 21:36:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10448079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTriggeredHappy/pseuds/TheTriggeredHappy
Summary: Takes place during episode 59, Angus's POV. Spoilers, obviously."I need to know what you know."





	

**Author's Note:**

> [[proofreading and editing is for the weak]]

Angus McDonald didn't know what to do today.

This was odd for him. He had endless options, no small amount of books in the library or rumors to investigate or locked rooms to snoop through, but today he didn't know what to do.

He'd gone to the Director about it, obviously, when it happened. He'd read a lot about most things, and he had never heard of someone's Stone of Farspeech just... going dark. The signal might not go through, and the attunment might go wonky, but never did it revert back to the passive, empty state it had pre-attunment. He didn't know what that meant. He'd spent awhile initially just calling in at random, but the signal never went through, same as any super-magic place. Then the day before he walked back into his room after dinner and he heard static and he called in and... it went dark on him. One final jolting crackle and it was completely dead in his hand.

He was a very observant person, it was the one quality he could always count on in himself. So despite her very practiced effort in keeping a straight face, he could read the Director clear as day. Grief, fear, sadness, guilt, remorse, resignation. He was only eleven years old, but he knew what that look meant after so many witnesses. The look of someone whose worst fears had been confirmed about their missing loved one. Somebody who knew all along that they were dead, but held onto some feeble shard of hope, now long gone.

"Where did you send them?" Angus asked, voice wavering in a way that some would pin on puberty, but the perceptive would know was intense emotion.

"I... I can't tell you that," the Director said, and she was lying, he just knew she was lying she just didn't want to admit what she'd done—

"We need to send a search party after them," Angus said, voice taut like the strings of Johan's violin, but much more fragile.

She looked so guilty at that, so sad and already having accepted that they were dead and—"Angus, listen, we can't just send a search party down there, if the boys couldn't handle the danger then nobody can and—"

"You could," Angus said, voice sharper than he'd ever heard from himself and it was still so fragile. The Director recoiled, and that was the look of the suspect realizing they were caught. "You're their boss, you're the most powerful magician on the moon, if you and Carey and Killian and Noelle and—"

"I can't do that, I'm—"

"It's your fault they're in this mess, and it's your responsibility to get them out of it!" Angus yelled, and the room fell completely silent and still. His face felt like it was on fire, and he was crying, he was crying furious tears and she was just _staring_ at him, how could she just _stand_ there, didn't she _get_ it, didn't she know who was probably hurt and dying and—

"Angus." He didn't wipe away his tears, just stared up at her, angry and terrified because if they really were hurt then—"Angus,"—what were they going to do they didn't have any more reclaimers and nobody could teach him magic or gardening or carving anymore and—"Angus darling, look at me."

He did. She was kneeling to eye level with him now, and her expression was tight, her eyes so terribly sad, and he could see just a sliver of vulnerability in them and he realized that her eyes were watering too.

"Angus, I believed in them," she said gently, and he knew that she was being honest. "I believed they could do this, if I didn't then they would've never been allowed to leave, I... we can't send anybody after them. Nobody would survive the trip." He could feel the angry tears welling up again and—"Angus, _I_ wouldn't even survive the trip."

"Why did you send them, then?" he asked, voice failing him partway through, cracking apart.

"Because together, those three are stronger than anything this world has ever seen," she said and she believed it, and that hurt too.

"Then... then they're okay," Angus said firmly, dragging his sleeve across his face forcefully. "Then they're fine. Their Stones just broke during a fight or something, it's possible. They're all going to come back home."

And he wasn't really sure if he was lying or not, but either way, he was good at that. He was good enough that she clearly believed him, even if only a little bit.

That was late in the evening. He'd gone to bed, he'd written in his journal briefly and finished the entry in the morning, then he wandered.

The sky was stormy. Stormy in a weird way, and nobody wanted to be outside in it. Angus decided to go sit in the main dome, to just hope that someone he knew would wander through to talk to him.

He saw Killian for just a minute. She was apparently late to train, so couldn't stay long, but apparently word had spread about the stone and she knew what he was going to say before he even got a chance to say it. "Heya kiddo, you doin' okay?" she asked, her aloof confidence laced with solemn concern.

"I'm alright!" he said brightly (he was a detective, and detectives were always good at faking things). "Hey, Killian? You were the one to first meet the reclaimer team, you think they're okay too, right?"

She smiled, and it was honest. "Heck yeah, 'course I do. Those three are good at doing the impossible, they'll come back with the relic and Merle will probably have his arm fixed or something."

Angus laughed. "That sounds about right."

Killian looked out the doorway and frowned for a second. "Hey, you should probably stay inside today," she said, "It looks like it's gonna storm today and you're like, ten pounds. You'd get washed right off the moon."

Angus pushed her, and she laughed, shifting compliantly if only to make Angus feel better. "I'm off, don't get into trouble!" she called, jogging away.

He waved goodbye to her.

He was sitting in exactly the same place a few hours later, watching clouds shift and hoping for the best.

  
"...back and... only two could get... brought back a wooden... Relic in here soon."

Angus blinked awake, confused as to when exactly he'd fallen asleep in the first place. He'd moved to sit against the wall, and he saw a guard passing by the pillar he was partially hidden by, leaving the dome in a hurry. He rubbed sleep from his eyes, tuning in to whatever was happening.

"...sure that they said Magnus didn't make it?" he heard, the distinctive voice of the Director.

"Positive. I... I didn't wanna believe it either. But they got the Relic at least," the guard replied.

Angus was on his feet, eyes wide.

"Merle has an eyepatch, but it looks like they're otherwise in one piece. They're most likely on their way here now."

Angus darted from behind the pillar, mouth open to demand directions, but he stopped dead when he saw the Director's expression.

"...Where are they?"

The Director and guard glanced at each other. She ended up speaking first. "I don't think going to see them would... be a good idea," she said slowly, tactfully.

"Of course it's a good idea, they're my friends, I need to go see them right now!" he insisted, bouncing impatiently on his feet.

The guard took his chance to leave and ducked out of the dome quickly. The Director floundered for a second. "I... listen, Angus, I promise you can see them soon, but for now just... just wait in this dome, alright?"

He felt like something cold was dripping down the back of his neck. "Are they okay? Did something happen?" he asked slowly.

"Just trust me for now, alright?" she asked, pleading, and despite his better judgement Angus conceded.

He heard steps behind him and turned, seeing Davenport pushing in the cart with the orb Angus knew by now as the orb used for holding Relics. Off-white and otherwise featureless. He couldn't even see where the door was supposed to be.

The Director sighed in relief and moved to walk briskly alongside the cart. Angus wrestled with an idea for a moment and darted to catch up. "Wait!"

She and Davenport stopped, turning to look at him.

He felt his face growing hot and he realized he had no excuse yet. "...Um. Is it... is it okay if I watch the Relic get destroyed?"

The Director frowned. "Is there any particular reason you want to...?" she asked slowly.

"Well, I'm learning a lot about magic and seeing it would be a good lesson and test of my knowledge and also as a detective I have really strong curiosity and it also just sounds like it would be super cool to watch since the—"

"Yes, yes, okay, you can watch it get broken, yes, dear god please just stop talking before you pass out," the Director caved. Angus beamed.

The procedure went just as it had before, albeit with fewer spectators. Angus, however, wasn't focused too closely on the usual formalities. Instead, he moved forward, humming and hawing over how interesting this blank white orb was and asking technical questions about its particular nature. As the Director listed off shallow answers, trying hard to remember the details of the setup, he pulled a pretty slick move and marked the orb with chalk. As he had been learning magic, he'd also learned that every drop counted, and when it came to destroying powerful artifacts... he had reason to be suspicious.

He found himself, for only a moment, flashing back to a particular day in the mess hall. This wasn't during a particular scheduled lesson, this was during a meal, where he'd ambushed the three as they sat talking and bickering. At first they ignored him for the most part (Merle out of annoyance, Magnus out of forgetfulness, and Taako out of... Taako), but eventually he was dragged into the spotlight of the conversation.

"So tell me, kid," Merle said, attempting to loom over Angus despite their nearly equal stature, "I wanna know, how's the whole magic thing going? Think you're a big shot yet?"

"Oh, heck no!" he said with a laugh. "I still have a ways to go!"

"I'm surprised you've managed anything at all," Merle huffed, gulping down the previously non-alcoholic root beer he'd gotten from the counter. "It'd take a pretty damn good teacher to get a little technical dork like you to learn even a little trickle of magic."

If he wasn't sitting directly next to Taako, Angus might not have noticed how he prickled at that. "Oh, excuse _me_ , did you forget who's teaching him, old man?" Taako asked sharply. "I happen to be the best fuckin' wizard on the moon, I'm makin' this kid into a regular protégée in no time flat. This isn't amateur hour."

"Yeah, right. What, has he made it all the way to level one spells yet?" the cleric asked sarcastically. Angus looked down at his knees, knowing he wasn't too far off.

"Are you challenging my magical abilities?" Taako asked, testy. "Ango, show this chump how shit is done. Lay down some magic."

Angus looked up, nervous. "Oh, um, wh-what spell should I use, sir?"

"Doesn't matter, still more magic than this lug uses out in the field," Taako jabbed. Merle crossed his arms. Even Magnus had stopped eating, the three all looking at him expectantly.

"Uh, um... um..." Angus searched through his mental database frantically, finally just tapping himself on the forehead with his wand quickly, channeling disguise self. "Uh, ta-da!"

Merle looked unimpressed, Magnus actually looked pleasantly surprised, and... he didn't even want to see what Taako thought. He must've messed the spell up. Oh gosh he'd gone and messed the stupid spell up and embarrassed himself and embarrassed Taako and now he'd stop teaching Angus magic and—

"What'd I fuckin' tell you?" Taako barked out, triumphant. "This kid mastered it better than I did when I was like, two years in! He's only gotten maybe twenty lessons total!"

"Did—did it turn out right?" Angus asked nervously.

Taako tossed him a pocket mirror and he looked in it closely. He barely contained a cheer. He'd made himself look exactly like a kid version of Johan, clothes and everything! He could see now that Merle had a little strain of annoyance in his stoic non-reaction. Angus felt the spell melting away quickly as his concentration was broken, but nobody seemed to care about that.

"I'm surprised you didn't go with a cantrip, but I do respect burning a spell slot to prove someone wrong," Taako said, sipping his drink.

"Well, he's already seen Mage Hand, and I haven't gotten much practice on some of the other ones..." Angus trailed off, mumbling,

"What, not even Prestidigitation?" Taako asked, scoffing.

"Oh, c'mon, that's the easiest spell in the book," Angus said, only partly joking.

"Well, it might be easy, but nobody else needs to know that," Taako said. He snapped his fingers, shooting finger guns, and sparks rained out of them in a fountain, like sparklers or tiny fireworks. "And sometimes even the hardest problem can be solved with an easy spell. Flashing lights and flair are perfect at focusing people's attention to precisely the wrong place, and _that's_ where you do the _real_  magic tricks."

"Huh. That makes sense," Angus said slowly.

"That's all there is to showbiz too, kiddo, nobody notices their wallet's gone until the fireworks show is over; know how to ignore the performance and see the stage."

Ignore the performance, Angus thought to himself grimly. Just watch the stage.

The ball went into the chamber and began to wheel. As it did so, Angus moved his eyes around the containment chamber, scanning vigorously for doors, other windows, anything. Looking for whatever it was that the Director was trying to hide so badly. He knew that whatever was going to happen would only take a split second. He couldn't so much as blink, or else he'd miss it.

He heard the door open, heard his friends, but he knew better than to look up now. They were talking to the Director. He continued scanning and watching the orb, tuning in to listen to whatever was going on now.

"...and if you could do this for us, please, we've done so much, lost so much..." Merle pleaded.

"Hell yeah, what he said, for sure," Taako agreed enthusiastically.

"I, I know that the two of you have had a truly awful day, and—"

"Course, glad you understand—" "Thanks cool—" the two said hurriedly, and Angus's eyebrows furrowed.

"Go wait... go wait in my office, I have some finger sandwiches in there, and we can all sort of, come down, a—a little bit, and, we can all figure out a good way, to... to send off our good friend Magnus. I do have some work to take care of first, but, you go ahead in there..."

"You take care of that, and, and thank you, that's... from the bottom of my heart," Merle said tearfully, voice rough with emotion.

Angus knew for sure at that moment that they were just spitting absolute bullshit. Something was up, something was going on and it was about to pop off in a major way. And they didn't feel the need to talk to Angus about it. He hadn't felt annoyed before, but he certainly was now.

How much of this was lying, then? They wouldn't use Magnus's death to get ahead, they weren't that terrible, so the lies were somewhere before or after the detail about that. Either they really did want to plan something for Magnus and somewhere after that they would get a con going, or...

Or he wasn't dead at all.

That could mean a lot of different things, he could be in another plane, he could be transfigured into a ladybug, he could be trapped in a lamp, but whatever the deal was, Magnus wasn't dead.

And they were prepared to let Angus believe that he was.

If he wasn't so focused on the orb spectacle, he would march into the office too just to lecture them. Or cry, probably just cry.

The lights show started shortly after they went into her office. His eyes hurt after only a second, but he held up a hand as if to shield his face—and used his thumb to search for where exactly the light was coming from. It would either be there or at the furthest point from there that the trick would happen. He kept straight in his head which direction the mark was facing on the orb when it went in. If it was turned or gone or anything then that would be proof that it was tampered with. He just had to wait.

And the light show ended, and the orb came out—

The mark was gone.

Angus got a hand onto is as fast as he could after it got out. It was still cool, not hot like often pretended, and the chalk mark, after a once-over...

Was gone.

Busted.

He reached a hand to his chest, where his wand hung on a lanyard under his shirt. He watched as the Director walked away—not to her office, but to do her "other work"—and once she was around the corner, he was running,

Through the door, noticing without a beat of pause that the double doors were opened, dashing into there—

And alarms ringing the moment he reached the doorframe.

His reflexes taught him well. He cast silence on the source in a heartbeat before he even realized what lay before him.

He frowned deeply as he looked at the scene. Merle and Taako both lying on the floor, both writhing and obviously terrified. Of... nothing.

He took a step forward to help and felt his leg sinking into the carpet. He blinked in surprise, realizing that there was some sort of illusion magic happening. And just like that he was free of it, standing unsteadily but nonetheless standing. He looked nervously to the alarm, where the bubble of silence had begun to thin out in even a moment of distraction. He needed to focus.

Within a moment or two, he saw Taako stop writhing and go nearly still, shivering and curling in on himself as whatever was happening got the better of him. Then he was sitting bolt upright. He whipped out a headband and glared at Merle for a second, saying aloud, "It's a trick, dummy!", and Merle was up too. They glanced around, noted the bell, and finally, for the first time since they got on the moonbase probably, they noticed Angus.

He felt a scalding remark burning on the tip of his tongue, but then he saw Taako's face lighting up with pride.

" _Hell_  yeah, nice magic little man!" Taako said, and whatever rant he was about to give just fizzled out. Instead, he just stuck to the simple,

"Start talking. I... I need to know what you know."

 

**Author's Note:**

> [[my tumblr is @thetriggeredhappy, my soul is in @actualhell because griffin keeps dishing out all these @feelings and @hurtingme let me die in peace]]


End file.
